The New sPvP Gamemode: What we know so far.

[eXistence.3876]

Stronghold was a blast! I loved it when it came out and would play it now if I had time to game..

[Hotride.2187]

Woah, another dead game mode like what was its name with the NPC escorts?

[Marxx.5021]

Stronghold could have worked. When Anet decided to put its resources somewhere else it was dead. And so was sPvP. Without commitment any new map or game mode will share the fate. According to the next expansion release plans there wont be suifficient resources to keep sPvP alive. Its again all about PvE which has numbers and creates revenue.

Edited July 25 by Marxx.5021

[Luthan.5236]

The thing is that they seem to focus on the "user-generated" depth/complexity. If we look at the points stated in the first post. (I did not watch the video.) Stronghold "technically" is much more mechanics (the NPCs and the lord and the mist champion) than conquest. But I guess there are people that will see it as more "straightforward" and therefore easier. (And maybe because people know a similar play style from MOBA games where you defend NPCs to let them attack the enemy  base.)

The conquest technically is just some capture points. Additionally points per kill. And the secondary mechanics. (They honestly are ot too hard to learn.) From the terrain many maps are not tooo complex. For Temple maybe you have a bit of a need to know that you also can drop down from top mid to move ot the south/mid capture point that way. But that is not really "complex".

There are decisions you need to make - regarding the combatz (finish vs cleave vs running away vs rezzing an own guy when another guy threatens to kill him while you try to finish another guy) - that can be complex, yeah. (Easy to learn that it exists. Harder to master ... when you just need experience to make the right decisions.) That will happen in other modes as well. Even if they tone down secondary mechanics. On the other hand you could see Stronghold as complex when you also have to split between defending vs. attacking. (Maybe doing something like letting 1 bunkter defend/distract the enemy while  the other players fully go on attack.)

That user-generated. The map itself can just be played by each team fully going on attack and then the faster one winning. I wonder how the new game mode is going to completely avoid such stuff. Such generated "complexity". (While still not being death match ... with the combat in death match actually bringing a bit of small complexity when you have that finish vs cleave  / rez decisions.)

Edit: And imo that is what makes it actuall great. When it is easy to learn - not hard to understand, the existing mechanics - but getting complex/interesting because of the different decisions you can make. The only/main thing that I could see go away in such a new game mode (if they want to remove "depth") is stuff like ... (for example) on Capricorn in the mid fighting over the bell (everyone fully focused on just getting the secondary mechanic) while no sides manages to get it and the enemy has a thief capping all the 3 points (when own team owned most of them) ... then turning it around ... making the enemy win. (Which you can try for you town team as well.) But that - in my opinion - is what makes it interesting. Can't just be a stupid "bell crier" that always wants the full team fighting endlessly at the bell crying over 25 lost points when you do not get the first one and then going afk. 😄

Edited July 25 by Luthan.5236

[Supernova Starr.2069]

On 7/23/2024 at 11:05 AM, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

Going off the recent Teapot Developer stream. You can watch it here (I've timestamped it)

 From the video we've gathered;

- The primary goal for the new mode will be being an easier gamemode than conquest that newer players can understand

- Less depth than conquest, so new players can focus more on learning pvp fighting and less on learning how to play a complex map. But still some depth and decision making to keep veteran players engaged.

- The goal is to narrow the gap between new and experienced players in the new mode, so that newer players can still contribute meaningfully without needing to be a veteran PvPer.

- Conquest will remain the primary gamemode for tournaments. The new gamemode will be more like a stepping stone for new players. It is not their intent to replace conquest

- For more experienced players it will be a more relaxing break from grinding conquest

- When the new mode comes out, it will be in a live Beta state, and it will be further developed and refined as time goes on

- The map for the mode is currently being developed and it will be very unrefined when it goes live. With greyboxes, untextured shapes, and temporary art. The map will be a very much unfinished prototype, but it will provide a space for them to build the gamemode in over time.

- The goal is to get the mechanics in and the gamemode built on the new map with very little developer resources. When it goes live and players give feedback on how to improve it, they will  begin to put more development resources into it

- They learned from Stronghold that putting a lot of resources into a new mode without gathering feedback first was a bad investment in development. And want to take this slower, multi-staged approach to developing the new mode. They want to make sure they get it right.

 

TLDR: dead on arrival content

[Mne Malo Tebya.2965]

2 minutes ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

TLDR: dead on arrival content

Forum Heroes are crazy:

Blaming Anet 24/7 that they abadoned pvp, that they dont care about pvp and nothing will ever change.

Also Forum Heroes when Anet does something for pvp:

It sucks! Noone will play this! Dead gamemode! Noone cares! 

 

 

[Supernova Starr.2069]

On 7/23/2024 at 2:19 PM, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

They mentioned a few times during the stream that they are developing the new map "internally", and seemed to suggest it's synonymous with low development resources. Maybe a lot of the PvE stuff is outsourced?

More like: sPvP content is on the lowest priority, whenever someone have a free time and willing, they work a few minutes there 🙂

[Supernova Starr.2069]

7 minutes ago, Mne Malo Tebya.2965 said:

Forum Heroes are crazy:

Blaming Anet 24/7 that they abadoned pvp, that they dont care about pvp and nothing will ever change.

Also Forum Heroes when Anet does something for pvp:

It sucks! Noone will play this! Dead gamemode! Noone cares! 

 

 

7 whole years without substantial content, and when they finally do is something that will seem to be entirely on beta, with issues they are well aware of.

But hey, if this low quality bait content is feeding you well, you do you. 🙂

[vilesoldier.9826]

20 minutes ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

7 whole years without substantial content, and when they finally do is something that will seem to be entirely on beta, with issues they are well aware of.

But hey, if this low quality bait content is feeding you well, you do you. 🙂

 

Being upset about "low quality bait content" this late in the game's life cycle is corny. "Back in my day" ahh comment 👴

[Supernova Starr.2069]

5 minutes ago, vilesoldier.9826 said:

 

Being upset about "low quality bait content" this late in the game's life cycle is corny. "Back in my day" ahh comment 👴

You know what? Unfinished and unpolished new game mode it's EXACTLY what sPvP players need. 

[vilesoldier.9826]

Just now, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

You know what? Unfinished and unpolished new game mode it's EXACTLY what sPvP players need. 

 

Definitely better than their track record of a) doing nothing for 7 years and b) releasing a fully built mode that many people didn't actually like.

What grand vision for this 12 year old game are you trying to get back to? It's been over, buddy

[Supernova Starr.2069]

3 minutes ago, vilesoldier.9826 said:

Definitely better than their track record of a) doing nothing for 7 years and b) releasing a fully built mode that many people didn't actually like.

And when nobody que up for this new game mode >

 

4 minutes ago, vilesoldier.9826 said:

What grand vision for this 12 year old game are you trying to get back to? It's been over, buddy

I don't envision anything grand, really, addressing the already know issues that were point out countless times in these foruns would already be a big win, but that's just me
Although new conquest maps wouldn't hurt 😉

[Mne Malo Tebya.2965]

56 minutes ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

7 whole years without substantial content, and when they finally do is something that will seem to be entirely on beta, with issues they are well aware of.

But hey, if this low quality bait content is feeding you well, you do you. 🙂

Yeah it might have been 7 years. Now we get content, it might not be perfect from the start. But its cringe that no matter what Anet does you keep crying and crying. If you dislike this game so much, youre free to move on.

I think the latest changes to AT's and new mode are a great step into a better pvp.

[Supernova Starr.2069]

9 hours ago, Mne Malo Tebya.2965 said:

Yeah it might have been 7 years. Now we get content, it might not be perfect from the start. But its cringe that no matter what Anet does you keep crying and crying. If you dislike this game so much, youre free to move on.

NPC behavior

[Mne Malo Tebya.2965]

10 hours ago, Supernova Starr.2069 said:

NPC behavior

Self-awareness is the first step to self-improvement

[Kozumi.5816]

On 7/23/2024 at 11:05 AM, Buzzbugs.1236 said:

- Conquest will remain the primary gamemode for tournaments. The new gamemode will be more like a stepping stone for new players. It is not their intent to replace conquest

Awful decision. Let conquest die the death it deserves. This fixation on a game mode no one wants to play is why pvp is dead.

[Swagg.9236]

Conquest isn't complicated lmao.  The game just lacks any holistic design philosophy which provides real roles for player expression.

New players don't leave PvP because it's complicated or intimidating; they leave because the content is obtuse, esoteric, and visually offensive:  tons of teleports, loads of particle effects, no significant cues for most significant attacks or traits, tons of protracted and passive defense, and an extremely bottlenecked metagame which really hasn't changed since launch outside of the fact that every class is just a roided-up copy of the two primordial builds which ran the PvP scene in 2013.

Could have tried to make a new game mode to push the limits on the way players move outside of spamming attacks on a selected target, but that's probably too difficult for them.  The only real solution would have been to let people use the map editor asset tool and just make their own maps.

Edited July 27 by Swagg.9236

[Fipmip.7219]

i have to agree that the main blocker to pvp is the knowledge check. there's no way you're going to understand wtf just happened when you die the first time in pvp. you basically have to play every class to understand what is going on.

Also, do people not play stronghold? it comes up all the time in casual matchmaking. i'd wager hundreds of stronghold games are played every day. why not just add more maps and heroes?

[Saiyan.1704]

10 hours ago, Kozumi.5816 said:

Awful decision. Let conquest die the death it deserves. This fixation on a game mode no one wants to play is why pvp is dead.

How old is this game? 12 years? If Conquest was going to "die" it would have back in 2012.

The players who keep the game mode alive have been the average casual gamers and the casual veteran gamers who come and go. The biggest issue with Conquest has always been the skill dispersity-- newbies immediately getting steamrolled by casual veterans within the first few games.

 

10 hours ago, Swagg.9236 said:

Conquest isn't complicated lmao.  The game just lacks any holistic design philosophy which provides real roles for player expression.

10 hours ago, Swagg.9236 said:

...they leave because the content is obtuse, esoteric, and visually offensive:  tons of teleports, loads of particle effects, no significant cues for most significant attacks or traits, tons of protracted and passive defense, and an extremely bottlenecked metagame

You say Conquest isn't complicated, but then list off what all the new players would call complicated. Targeting enemies through particle effects, understanding what passives a class has after a single engagement or handling "teleports" efficiently throughout a Conquest match is what Plat players do on the daily. The whole purpose of the new game mode is to reduce the gap between players who finds your list to be an issue, and the players who don't.

[Luthan.5236]

7 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

Targeting enemies through particle effects, understanding what passives a class has after a single engagement or handling "teleports" efficiently throughout a Conquest match is what Plat players do on the daily. The whole purpose of the new game mode is to reduce the gap between players who finds your list to be an issue, and the players who don't.

But that is actually the problem with the game mode and their intention: That stuff is part of the combat system and the combat. If they actually remove other parts (regarding the map mechanics) they make it even more focused on that. Making it harder for people that are not too good at combat (who on conquest still can do stuff if they correctly move and play the secondary mechanics).

I guess we'll need wait for the first Alpha of the map to get released - in the next years maybe. (Until full implementation it should take a lot of years since they are slow at such stuff.) Could be that they want people to train pure combat (free from having to care about other stuff) first ... would be closer to a death match then.

I wonder though ... about people that are fine with being not tooo good at combat - that prefer the fun map mechanics (trying to still slowly improve a bit at combat). And if the new mode is more (or only) focused on combat it might even "scare away" players more ... that are bad at combat at the start. (That otherwise still could be happe capping an undefended node in conquest.)

I mean ... there is the matchmaking and rating/rank ... so when you suddenly can't find undefended nodes to cap (when trying to avoid combat cause you get killed a lot) you have to improve at combat as well in the conquest mode.

[Swagg.9236]

19 hours ago, Saiyan.1704 said:

You say Conquest isn't complicated, but then list off what all the new players would call complicated. Targeting enemies through particle effects, understanding what passives a class has after a single engagement or handling "teleports" efficiently throughout a Conquest match is what Plat players do on the daily. The whole purpose of the new game mode is to reduce the gap between players who finds your list to be an issue, and the players who don't.

Those aren't elements of the conquest game mode; those are elements of GW2 PvP which tend to make any PvP encounter a confusing eyesore for any newcomer.  Moreover, GW2's lack of combat legibility isn't a layer of complexity but rather a layer of frustrating obfuscation (frustrating because it serves zero functional purpose since so many player animations are recycled and so many particle effects cloud models anyway).

In fact, conquest is actually SO simple that it likely only hampers player expression further than it already is by a lack of any real design philosophy for class roles.  The most recent maps are extremely flat and open with tons of dead space.  Footsies and neutral space don't really exist because people just instant-transmission into each other from 1500 range or dogpile onto a pre-selected, most vulnerable target matchup.  Most maps in general focus on exploiting teleport pathing or geometry gimmicks which explicitly counter teleports.  Raw movement isn't a skill in GW2, and the skill curve behind timing is about as steep as a wheelchair ramp because the best abilities are instant, near-instant, or get passively supported by instant, layerable effect mitigation.

Like I said, you'd be better off designing a mode or maps that actually try to lean into raw movement as a skill that affects gameplay rather than making a "simpler" game mode.  The real strat still remains player-created maps, but they've had their chance for years there.  The tool they use to generate maps isn't even that complicated.  It's kind of nuts that it just rots on an anet server somewhere.